20 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



Roman soil which once produced 100, 150, or even 200 for 

 one, now yields but five, our, or even three. This principle 

 of cropping without manure, a movement slow but irresistible 

 has brought those ancient centers of civilization and wealth 

 to so low a level. If Egypt has escaped this great decadence 

 of fertility, Egypt, which more than any other land has been 

 the theatre of wars, ravaged by armies, incessantly .oppressed, 

 and subject to every variety of disturbance, if this land has 

 escaped, we repeat that it is because of its Nile, which has 

 continued to inundate its lands and each year renew its fer- 

 tility. I know that it is hard for the historian who is search- 

 ing for the cause of great phases of human progress or decline, 

 to find it in a heap of dung, but there it is if he will but find 

 it. It may be to him a new chapter, but it will be but another 

 example where great events may be traced to what at first 

 appears to be but small causes." 



Thus speak the learned French authorities whom I have 

 quoted, and they go on to give the picture of some of the 

 lands in detail, of Sicily, Algeria, Syria, etc., where the hills 

 despoiled of their forests, and not elothed with grass, have 

 been the prey of the storms for twenty or thirty centuries, the 

 climate has been changed, the rains are capricious and vio- 

 lent, at times the soil has been washed from the hills, leaving 

 but their rocky skeletons, the valleys half depopulated by the 

 overflow of gravel from the hills, and the countries, once the 

 types of wealth, now that of desolation and poverty. 



Contrast this with Northern Europe, where, to be sure, the 

 climate is more moist, but where pasturage is more of an 

 item. The turf protects the hills from the ravages of the 

 rains, and the rains are not so spasmodic. The keep- 

 ing of cattle gives us a continual means of manuring, and 

 thus the fertility of the soil has been kept up, in fact has 

 increased, until the most densely populated regions of the civ- 

 ilized world are found there, and certainly the centres of the 

 greatest wealth. 



" Pasturage then, furnishes the only means which we have 

 of preserving indefinitely the fertility of our soil, the keeping 

 of cattle being the only means of furnishing the enormous 



